Gourmet Riders

This weekend we went on what for us is our 2nd Annual Gourmet Lunch Ride at Camp Creek. Usually on our rides we stop for lunch and enjoy a baloney sandwich and maybe a piece of fruit and a cookie or two, along with a bottle of water. Yesterday we enjoyed Fried Chicken, Baked Beans, Shrimp, Chicken Salad, Quiche, a veggie and fruit platter, along with Chocolate Chip cookies, Chocolate Dipped Strawberries, and Chocolate Caramel Brownies, complete with wine. Even had a Caesar Salad prepared right there on the spot. Forgive me if I forgot something but rest assured I ate some of everything, and according to Blue to much of everything. To many more meals like this and I will be trading up to one of Matt’s Percheron’s.

 

We packed it all in to the Juniper Tree lunch spot in our saddle bags. Nobody hungry on this ride. We saw some pretty country and even got to try out our slickers for a minute or two. That seems to be a regular thing on this ride too, as the only time I used it last year was on this same trail. We dropped down into Camp Creek and meandered up the creek to the falls. They aren’t huge but from what we have seen on our, granted, limited travels in Arizona, these might well be Arizona’s Niagara Falls.

 

Brenda’s new horse, Wink, is working out well and taking to the trails like a champ.

And we are infiltrating our riding group with more and more Canadians all the time. Here is Verna Pohl from up Ponoka way in Alberta on her big fellow Ben. Ken and Verna have just purchased a place down the road and across the wash from us down here at Dogpound South.

The map below shows our route, and our lunch was in the same place as last year, under the big Juniper Tree although someone felt the need to remove the sign and all the neat things that were there when we visited last year.

 

Monday we had visitors from back in Canada, well, really they are over in Gold Canyon and just hopped on their horse (iron) and headed over towards Dogpound South. Rene’ and Jeanette write a blog, RV Voyageur, that we follow and we have read and commented on each others blogs for a few years now. They hale from Langley, B.C. and travel with a fifth wheel and their motorcycle loaded on a swivel wheel trailer behind.

Although Brenda and I think we are witty and charming, her more than me, we have a secret weapon at our disposal when it comes to getting folks to head down the road to Dogpound. Brenda broke open the whole arsenal today and we lunched on Grilled Tenderloins, Garlic Bread, a great salad, and the super secret cheezy potatoes. She followed that up with a Fresh baked Apple Pie and ice cream. Needless to say supper is not in the cards today.

Like most folks whose blogs we follow we already know a lot about each other so we are able to get right to the serious chin wagging without a lot of the introductory stuff that meeting new folks usually entails. We spent a few hours enjoying the sun and conversation on the deck.

And then we decided it was time to switch up the game a little and trade rides for a while. Rene’ and Jeanette are good sports and went along with our idea.

Now the horse I usually ride is a little heavier than this critter, but he can stand up on his own so if I look a little tense it was because I didn’t want to scratch up all that nice shiny chrome by letting this fellow roll over on our rough old granite. Rest easy Mom, Rene’ kept the keys in his pocket, and I have gotten my motorcycling urge out of the way for another few years.

Had to steal this photo from Rene’s blog, somehow we didn’t get any of us on the bike on our camera.

Well all good things must come to an end so we said our “see ya laters” and they headed out to do battle with the Phoenix rush hour traffic and we captured the image below so we can put this journal entry to bed in the tradition of another blogger, the Birdlady of Blogland, who I might add is amazing all the folks on the East Coast with her rapid recovery from hip surgery.

The End